ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — A 77-year-old Kansas man who died last weekend in a western Newfoundland hotel fire was fulfilling a dream of hunting a moose — and his daughter says he got one.
Eugene Earl Spoon phoned his daughter, Gina Heller, the evening before the fire to say he had successfully shot a Newfoundland moose, she said in an interview Friday.
Elated, he told her about the wonderful people he’d met on the trip, and he even passed the phone to a woman he had become friends with so Heller could say hello, she said.
It was Heller’s last call with her father.
“He was a social butterfly,” she said. “Everybody thought he was just great. He loved life and he made friends everywhere he went.”
Spoon was a guest at the Driftwood Inn in Deer Lake, N.L., which was destroyed by a massive fire on the morning of Oct.19. His family got a call the next day from the local police saying he was missing.
On Wednesday, RCMP said his remains had been found in the hotel’s debris. That same day, Heller got a card in the mail from Spoon, gushing about his trip.
“Just living the dream. Life is to be experienced,” he wrote. “I’m doing that.”
The meat from the moose Spoon shot will be donated to a local food bank or other local charity, as per his family’s request, said Deer Lake Mayor Mike Goosney. The town is home to about 4,800 people, and they are deeply shaken by Spoon's death, the mayor added.
Spoon grew up on a farm in Kansas and began hunting when he was a young boy, Heller said. He even travelled to Africa to shoot big game. For Spoon, hunting was about being close to nature, and about making friends to share a drink with by the campfire at the end of the day, Heller said.
He was clearly doing just that in Newfoundland, she added. It was a bucket-list trip, and he'd been planning it for months. He was travelling alone, but that was no problem for him, since he was so adept at making friends.
"He lost his wife, my stepmother, in December," Heller said. "So he was just learning to put his life back together. And he was doing it."
Spoon was a successful insurance salesman, a proud accomplishment for "a farm boy from Kansas," she added.
He had two daughters, six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. They're all shocked and devastated by his death, Heller said.
"I'm gonna live my life a little different now," she said. "You don't know when your last day is. And my dad lived like that every single day."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2024.
Sarah Smellie, The Canadian Press